


local warm state students know nothing about snow

by pouler



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Cuban Lance (Voltron), M/M, Mutual Pining, Swearing, Texan Keith (Voltron), broganes, but the pining is resolved, first snow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:41:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22125799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pouler/pseuds/pouler
Summary: Lance was a Cuban-born student from Miami. Keith knew this from their first meeting, from the Cuban flag Lance draped on his wall when decorating, from his near-constant beach nostalgia, from his perfect ability to switch from English to Spanish and back again. He was wearing grey sweats and a royal blue sweatshirt, which had to be the extent of his “cold weather” clothes. But Keith was born and raised in Texas, and the heat and sun were just as much of friends to him as they were to Lance. They were both in foreign territory.---It’s Keith and Lance versus the snow, and they have no idea what to do.
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 110





	local warm state students know nothing about snow

**Author's Note:**

> completed for the day four prompt of Klance AU Month, found on twitter at @monthlyklance

Keith woke up just in time to hear Lance say, “What the _actual_ fuck?”  
He rolled over to face his desk beside his bed, throwing an arm to the top of it and feeling around until he came in contact with his phone. He grabbed hold of it and brought it to his face to bring up his lock screen. The time read 7:49 AM; Lance had an 8 AM class on Tuesdays. Lance wasn’t a morning person, like Keith, so he had a tendency to run out of their dorm at anywhere between 7:50 and 7:55. Fortunately, the building that his class was in was just up the hill from their dorm building, meaning it was likely that Lance probably only ever about ten minutes late at the most.  
Keith said, still half-asleep, “Don’t you have class to get to?”  
He heard Lance’s reply come from by the window in their room. “Keith, buddy, you’re going to want to see this.”  
Keith dropped his phone back on his desk and groaned as he got up, forcing his limbs into action. He grumbled as he walked over to where Lance was standing, “This better be worth it, Lance.”  
When he reached Lance, though, and saw what he was looking at, all vestiges of sleepiness left his body at once.  
“What the _hell?”_  
Their campus was covered in glittering white snow. It decorated the rooftops of the buildings, obscured the front windshields of the cars in the dorm parking lot, and turned any sidewalks that may have existed into mere suggestions. The glare of the sun’s reflection was almost too much for Keith, who still lacked his glasses, so he turned to look at Lance instead.  
“I knew it was going to be cold today, so I had planned to drive to the science building for class,” Lance said, and Keith looked down to see the glint of Lance’s car keys dangling from where the keyring was looped around his index finger. “But what the fuck am I supposed to do with _this?”_  
Lance was a Cuban-born student from Miami. Keith knew this from their first meeting, from the Cuban flag Lance draped on his wall when decorating, from his near-constant beach nostalgia, from his perfect ability to switch from English to Spanish and back again. He was wearing grey sweats and a royal blue sweatshirt, which had to be the extent of his “cold weather” clothes. But Keith was born and raised in Texas, and the heat and sun were just as much of friends to him as they were to Lance. They were both in foreign territory.  
“Well, for one, I don’t think you’re going to drive to class,” Keith said. “But unless you want to walk, I’m not sure you’ll be making it to class at all today.”  
He walked back to his desk and picked up his phone once more, putting on his glasses as well.  
“What are you doing?” Lance asked.  
“I’m going to FaceTime my brother-in-law, Adam. My brother’s as useless with this stuff as I am, but his husband is from up north; he warned me this might happen. He’ll know what to do.”  
Lance groaned and walked over to Keith’s bed, flopping face-first into Keith’s pillow. Keith stopped in the middle of pulling up Adam’s contact to stare red-faced at the back of his roommate’s head.  
“Um,” he said before resuming calling Adam. “Is there any reason why you’re laying on my bed?”  
“Mine is cold,” came Lance’s muffled reply. “And you’re the one making the call, so why would we be on my bed for it?”  
“Didn’t realize you’d be joining me on the call,” Keith said, keeping his head down to try and hide his flush as much as possible.  
He pushed the “call” button to send the FaceTime request, then turned the volume up to nearly its full limit. He sat down on the edge of his bed, and Lance shifted so that he was at least parallel to Keith’s orientation, though his head was still right by Keith’s hip due to him laying down.  
The phone rang three times before it was answered, settling on a black screen before settling on an image of a window showing bright and clear blue skies. “Hello?” the person asked, and Keith groaned.  
“Shiro,” he said. “Where is Adam? And why can’t I see you?”  
“He’s making coffee, and I look terrible, that’s why you can’t see me.”  
“You always look terrible,” Keith muttered.  
“I heard that, asshole.” Shiro turned the camera around to settle on his face, bleary eyes showing that he, too, had just woken up and was not yet fully functional for the day.  
Lance laughed, and Keith could almost hear Shiro perk up over the phone at the sound.  
“No,” Keith said, knowing what Shiro was about to do next. “Don’t even start. I need Adam.”  
“So nice of you to give me a call, brother dearest. You could at least say hello.”  
Keith could hear the shit-eating grin growing from just the intonation of Shiro’s voice, and he rolled his eyes.  
“Hello, Shiro. I need Adam,” he monotoned.  
“And what’s so important that you need Adam’s help over some good old brotherly advice?”  
Keith stood up and began to walk over to the window once more as he said, “Unless you magically know what to do about,” he paused to flip his phone around so that Shiro could look out the window at the snow, “this, I need to talk to Adam.”  
Keith turned his phone back around once more so that he could see his brother’s face again, sending an “I told you so” look his direction once they made eye contact.  
“So you two geniuses can’t figure it out?” Shiro said with a sudden grin.  
“I’m from Cuba. And Florida,” came Lance’s voice right next to Keith’s ear, and he jumped. Keith hadn’t noticed Lance get off of his bed and come up behind him, stopping _right behind him,_ and that would explain Shiro looking annoyingly pleased. Keith still regretted calling Shiro to freak out about his newly-realized crush on Lance, but alas, it was months too late to take it back.  
“Yeah, and I know as much about snow as you do,” Keith added after recovering.  
“Actually, you know less.” Keith raised an eyebrow at Shiro.  
“I’m married to the snow expert!” Shiro said, raising his hands, before looking away from the camera in what Keith assumed was the direction of the doorway. He could just barely make out the dull sound of footsteps approaching, and it wasn’t long before Adam appeared in the image, coffee mug in hand.  
“You called?” Adam said as he settled onto his and Shiro’s bed.  
“Yeah, hey, so it kind of snowed here last night, and Lance and I don’t really know what to do. Is it even safe to go anywhere? How the hell are we supposed to eat if we don’t have food in our dorms?” Keith asked as he and Lance made their way back to Keith’s bed, taking up their previous positions.  
“Okay, well, first off, yes, it’s safe to go places, but seeing as it’s still relatively early in the morning, I wouldn’t recommend it, at least for you guys.”  
Keith nudged Lance, who had pushed himself up onto his forearms to see the screen, with his elbow. “That means you should probably let your professor know that you won’t be in class.”  
Lance scoffed and said, “Yeah, yeah,” but moved to pull his phone out of the pocket of his sweatpants all the same. Keith turned back to Adam, who was matching grins with Shiro. Keith flipped them off, causing Shiro to laugh.  
“ _Anyways,_ ” Keith prompted with a glare in his brother’s direction.  
“Anyways, as far as the question of your nourishment goes, it should get better as the day progresses. The grounds staff should clear the streets and sidewalks, plus with other people walking around it’ll clear more of the snow off. Do you know if it’s supposed to snow again, or is this it?”  
“I’ll check,” Lance piped in. He had rolled to lay on his back, and he was right by Keith’s legs to the point where if he moved any further left, his head would be pillowed on Keith’s thigh.  
Keith turned his head to watch as Lance opened up his weather app, scrolling through the forecast for the day before announcing, “They’re saying that it’s going to snow again tonight.”  
“Okay,” Adam said. “So if nothing else, you’re probably going to want to go out and scrape the windshields of your cars.”  
“If we want to?” Keith asked, one eyebrow raised.  
“It is my professional advice that you go out and scrape the windshields of your cars. That way, you won’t have two layers of ice or snow to clear off if you don’t go out until tomorrow.”  
“So how exactly do we go about clearing the windshield?” Lance asked.  
“You’ll need an ice scraper; Keith, I put one underneath your seat in your car. And you’ll want to make sure the heat in your car is set to defrost.”  
“And what about if you _don’t_ have an ice scraper?”  
\---  
“I take it back, I’d rather just suffer with two layers of ice tomorrow. We’re not even close to finals week yet, I can miss a couple days of class while it all just melts off.”  
Keith looked over his windshield, about a quarter of the way cleared of ice, to where Lance was attempting to clear his own using a gift card as a makeshift scraper, per Adam’s suggestion.  
After they’d ended the call, the two had gotten ready to face the cold the best they could, meaning both of them were in sweatpants, sweatshirts, as thick of socks as they could find, and tennis shoes. Keith, also on Adam’s suggestion, had put in his contacts so that he wouldn’t have any issues with his glasses fogging up.  
Lance, despite his protests, was wearing a red thick coat that Adam had given to Keith; Keith argued that his sweatshirt was thicker than Lance’s and he had more long sleeve shirts, meaning he could still layer clothing and give himself protection from the weather. Keith had also given Lance the gloves that Adam had packed for him, pointing out that Lance’s fingers were going to be closer to the ice given the short span of the gift card, and therefore they would be colder.  
Lance had scraped just barely less than what Keith had done, but Keith knew it would still take longer for Lance with such a small device.  
“You’ll be fine,” Keith called. “Just keep working, and I’ll come over and help you finish as soon as I’m done.”  
They worked in silence, each stewing in their own thoughts. Barely anyone passed by the dorm parking lot, be it on foot or by car. Keith wondered once if he should pull out his phone to play music as they worked, just for some noise in an otherwise quiet pocket of time, but ultimately decided against it. The silence wasn’t crushing or painfully awkward, but rather companionable and not one that needed filled.  
Before he knew it, Keith had his windshield entirely clear of icy detritus. He opened his car door and turned off the defrost, then the car itself, before shutting the door and locking it. He then made his way down three cars to where Lance had about three-quarters of the windshield cleared.  
“I have arrived,” Keith announced to Lance, who was glaring at the ice remaining.  
Lance jumped and lost hold of his makeshift scraper, which clattered down beside the car. “Thank god!” he screeched. “Keith, buddy, you’ve _got_ to clean this last bit of ice for me; I think I’m losing feeling in my fingers from holding that card so tight.”  
“Lance, I just cleaned my whole windshield.”  
“Please?” Lance dragged out, sticking his bottom lip out at Keith. “I’ll love you forever.”  
Keith sighed even as his heart jumped in his chest. Even though he knew Lance didn’t mean it in the way that Keith wanted him to. “Fuck you.”  
“You’re the best, Keith!” Lance said as he bent down to pick up his abandoned gift card, and Keith started to work on clearing the rest of the ice.  
A few minutes later found Lance turning off and locking his car, then getting out and waiting as Keith went back to his to put the ice scraper back where he had found it. Once Keith made his way back to Lance, they started the short walk back to the dorm.  
“You really didn’t have to let me wear your stuff,” Lance said, “but I really appreciate it. I think my fingers would’ve been really numb if I didn’t have these gloves.”  
“I’m just glad one of us has someone who knows about the cold. We’d be a mess if we didn’t,” Keith said as he curled and uncurled his fingers, trying to stimulate them enough to work off a little bit of the cold he felt from keeping his hands exposed for so long.  
“Oh, shit,” Lance said, picking up on what Keith was doing. “Here.”  
He pulled his left glove off of his hand and handed it over to Keith, who put it on right before they reached the door to the dorm building. Lance opened the door for Keith, who stepped in. Lance followed, then made his way back to Keith’s right side.  
“Thanks, but no offense, why only one glove?” Keith asked.  
Lance, in response, reached out and took Keith’s uncovered right hand in Lance’s uncovered left, lacing their fingers together.  
“There’s only so many ways to keep four hands warm with only two gloves, Keith.”  
Keith felt the heat radiating from every part of his body, enough that he was sure he could melt some of the snow himself if they were still outside.  
“Also, I just really wanted to hold your hand.”  
Keith turned his head so quickly that his neck cracked, eyes wide, stopping both of them in the middle of the hallway. Lance was smiling sheepishly at him, right hand coming up to rub the back of his neck.  
“I’m really okay with that,” Keith said, and Lance’s smile grew wider.  
“So,” Lance said, setting them in motion once more, “I was thinking we could have a movie marathon when we get back to the dorm? That was enough time outside for me today.”  
Keith looked at Lance and smiled. “I’m okay with just about anything as long as you’re there.”  
The smile Lance gave Keith was warm enough to melt any snow or ice, and the pair set off to their dorm with enough new knowledge to last a lifetime.

**Author's Note:**

> oh my god they were roommates


End file.
